Destroy all Monster is another one of my favorites . It was the last good monster film of the Showa series . The special effects are good and well excuted . The only thing I did not like about this movie is that Varan and Baragon don't get much of an apperance Baragon only gets 20 seconds Varan only got bnetween 7-10 seconds why you may ask ? The suits had detorited and they could ony get short appearence. Destroy all Monsters gets on my rating 4 oujt of 5 stars ...

Wow!,it's the year 1999,Space:1999,well,actually this came first,but both fancy the idea of daily space flights to the moon,like for instance astronaut Akira Kubo and the rest of the spaceship crew of SY-3,fortunatly the moon's not going out of earth orbit nor is there another Gorath,but unfortunatly they do encounter a UFO belonging to the Kilaaks,with the exception of some alien we meet,like Prince of Space,Maya,Dr.Who and a few others,most come from planets that are dieing and want to take over earth,like The Mysterians,Natels,X-ites ect.,anyway the Kilaaks invade MonsterIsland and force the monsters and people to try to conquer the world for the glory of Kilaak,one of them is Yukiko Kobayashi,who just happens to look like the Gracie Allen of Japan,I wonder if she's related to the equally lovely Tetsuko Kobayashi who was the Empress of MU in Atragon,anyhow we can't let this happen so in order to stop it the people of earth have to find the Kilaaks main sytem of control,it's on the moon!,so the crew of SY-3 takes care of that and the monsters and people are freed,including Garcie Allenson,so the Kilaaks send in Ghdriah-The 3-Headed Monster in to Destroy All Earth Monsters,except Gamera,he should of been there,Toho Diae conflicts not withstanding,well the final monster fight was certainly better than thoes in Godzilla The Final Wars,especially the part where Gorasoras dropkicks Ghidrah!,Earth Monsters win,and SY-3 takes care of the last Kilaak ufo,seems they couldn't stand the cold,which brings up just one more thing,the head of the Monsterland project was nonother than Jun Tazaki,and as all of us remember he's the one who lead Atragons attack aginst the MU Empire,see this would of been a perfect oppertunity to get Atragon out of the mothballs and use that Zreo Ray Cannon aginst the Kilaaks,you know how well it worked aginst the MU Empire,just ask Tetsuko Kobayashi,she'll tell you!.

In 'Fantastic Four' (vol. 1) #347, the premise is a homage of sorts to this film. The alien Skrulls use the monsters of Monster Island as a tool to try to conquer the Earth but are defeated by Spider-Man, Wolverine, the Hulk and Ghost Rider-I thought it was a nice shout-out to the sci-fi of yesteryear.

Chris K. mentioned how the film's original American-English dub-track was supposedly lost. That's more of a shame than younger fans may initially realize. The original English narration was by celebrated announcer Norman Rose. And there is an even bigger loss: the original English-dub for Akira Kubo's Katsu was by his regular -- and very well-known -- dub artist Jack Kirby. Kirby dubbed Kubo's voice in a great many of Kubo's onscreen and offscreen performances, including the original "Speed Racer" cartoons. That's Kirby dubbing for Kubo in the English-language versions of "Son Of Godzilla" and "Godzilla vs. Monster Zero". Ironically, the new English dubtrack does make a few, perhaps unintentional improvements in some awkward places of the original dub -- in the original dub, the Kilaaks were said to be incapable of dying, and when Ghidorah arrives on the scene Dr. Yoshida immediately orders that the controls be reset -- as though the Monsters wouldn't otherwise fight Ghidorah (a little too perfect with the mind-control, Doc). However, not counting the fact that a number of the voices on the newer dubtrack are sadlcartoonish, there is one piece of the original dub which is sadly missed: when Dr. Yoshida is addressing the reporters, the newer dub has him suddenly speaking unaccountably about a typhoon which occured twenty years earlier. In the original dub, he says something very much(or possibly exactly) like: "What we know now is simply ancient history. When the Monsters first appeared, they meant to DESTROY THE EARTH." That's a line from the original English dubbing I truly miss.

there was a Jack Grimes who worked with Titra Dubbing (along with Peter "Speed Racer" Fernandez, who wrote most if not all of Titra's dub scripts). i believe Hal (Barney Miller) Linden dubbed Akira Kubo (at least according to the IMdB).i have a really nice DVD copy of this and SMOG MONSTER both with the AIP original dubs. anyone interested should PM me, i'd be happy to help.

Xenorama is indeed right. Akira Kubo's regular English-dubber was indeed Jack Grimes, not Jack Kirby. Well, now that that's rectified, how about some more attempted insights into the various non sequitors of "Destroy All Monsters"?

-- How did Katsu know that Kyoko's earrings were mind-control devices? Did he recognize the Kilaak metal in their composition? Talk about being super-observant!-- It's clear that the monsters are being controlled by those metallic "rocks" which are being used as miniature relay-stations by the Kilaaks rather than the bodily implants inserted into humans to control them. But after the United Nations begins collecting these devices, the monsters apparently still remain under Kilaak control. Are the Kilaaks replacing those transmitters as fast as they are being removed? And how?-- In the original English-dub, the Kilaak Queen never hesitates to say her people are taking over Earth and want humanity as their slaves; there is no dementedly perky "I have a dream" speech about establishing "a new scientific civilization" on our world. But there is never any explanation in either dub about why the Kilaaks want to enslave humans. Considering that the Kilaaks are actually tiny sluglike beings of "living metal" which can only exist properly in extreme heat (it's even possible they use heat rather than any gaseous air for respiration), one is tempted to believe that they need human physicality due to the obvious limitations of their physical nature; like in Mario Bava's "Planet Of The Vampires", where the Aurans take over human bodies because their noncorporeal state prevents them from building anything. Yet the Kilaaks successfully assume human form and have successfully developed an advanced technology. So why enslave humanity?-- If the Kilaaks truly come from a tiny planet between Mars and Jupiter (i.e., an asteroid), how can they have come from a molten-hot environment when that portion of space is so distant from the sun's heat? They would have to have come from inside an asteroid with a molten core similar to Earth's (a physical impossibility, to say the least). Of course, such a small planetary body lacking any atmosphere couldn't maintain a molten core for long, so of course the Kilaaks would have to move as their world cooled. But why not go to a more appropriate, superhot world such as Mercury or Venus rather than Earth?-- If the Kilaaks, even in an assumed human form, still require a molten-hot environment, how can those various mind-controlled humans be seen in their presence without burning to cinders? It would seem because those humans are not humans at all, but other Kilaaks -- possibly humans transformed into Kilaaks? Is that what the Kilaaks really need humans for: genetic stock to replenish their race? Maybe that explains why no human bodies are seen after the SY-3 crew destroy the Kilaaks' moonbase.-- And hey ... just what kind of technology could function or even survive in a molten Kilaak environment?

I often re-watch this film, and it always brings back a slew of memories. I first watched it when I was 14 (on a Friday the 13th!), and up to that point my only *daikaiju* experiences were with the original "Godzilla", "Godzilla Versus The Thing" ["Mothra Versus Godzilla"], and "King Kong Escapes" as well as the non-Toho film "Monster From A Prehistoric Planet" ["Gappa The Triphibian Monster"]; I had heard of Rodan and Ghidrah, but was unfamiliar with Manda, Angilius, and the others, and thought they might be totally new monsters which would have attacked Japan in the future sometime prior to the movie -- I wasn't sure if Gorosaurus was the same tyrannosaur I'd seen in "KIng Kong Escapes", but of course he was. A few more interesting observations:

-- The original movie poster for this film was fantastically deceptive. Almost none of the monsters depicted are shown in the film, and in fact are mostly unidentifiable except for a giant spider which is obviously Spiga. There is a three-headed winged dragon, but it scarcely resembles Ghidrah and is breathing fire. A bipedal spiky thing may be Angilus or Varan, another looks like a hairless and deformed ape, and a beaked thing with horn-rimmed eyes might be Gappa (which doesn't appear in the film).-- The force fields are all referred to as "walls" in the newer dub-track; the one surrounding Monsterland was originally referred to as an "electromagnetic force screen"; still, th e fact the Kilaak force fields ring when struck is a nice touch.-- Ghidrah's defeat is all the more wonderful because the Earth-monsters actually KILL him! It is truly the most SATISFYING death-scene in *daikaiju* history. Even back then, Ghidrah was such a repugnant creature that it is always so wonderful to see his three heads get the very life stomped, bitten, smoke-ringed out of them.

Oh, and I remember something else. "Destroy All Monsters" was the first time I found out about Godzilla's son. I was just beginning to learn about genetics and mutations back then (1970), and had assumed that Godzilla was STERILE because of all that radioactivity he's charged with. I hadn't heard of "Son Of Godzilla" yet, and when I actually saw Minya/Minilla/Son of Godzilla, I thought he resembled that old comic actor Jimmy Durante (??!!!). But even then his ridiculous appearance didn't surprise me because I realized that, being the offspring of one or two radioactive parents, he was obviously DEFORMED.